June 20, 2010

I was able to play in my room for a short while this weekend. I'm not sure where the time goes, but I haven't been able to do a lot of sewing lately. Today I made another pineapple block. That probably doesn't sound like progress to you, but my new goal is to make two or three blocks every month. At least that's my goal today. As you know, I have a short attention span. Very short.

The blocks are looking a little muddy. After looking at a black and white picture of the blocks, it looks like I'll need to work on the contrast a little more.

Karen and I began making Pineapple blocks at the same time. After we each made our first block, we were afraid we had jumped in over our heads. We even discussed making giant potholders from the existing blocks and pretending like it never happened. "What Pineapple blocks?" Right after that conversation, I found this pattern by Debra Roberts in the August 2010 issue of American Patchwork & Quilting.

Pretty, huh? Since I had all my bright fabrics handy from making the Pineapple blocks, I had to try this one using some of my scraps.

June 16, 2010

Thanks so much for playing along in the Simple Style give-away. I enjoyed reading all the comments, even though I haven't been able to respond to all of them yet. I'm getting a little bored with the random number generator routine, so next time I'll try to come up with something a little more creative for choosing the winner. (If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear about it.) For now, though, the winning number is 4! Carol, if you'll send me your mailing address, your new book will be on its way.

June 13, 2010

Stylish and simple -- it doesn't get better than that. Sara Diepersloot has made it easy to create beautiful quilts in a lot less time. She uses fabric to create the style, and large pieces for simplicity.

We don't always have time to make quilts using hundreds of tiny pieces, but we can still whip up beautiful quilts using large pieces if we let our fabrics do the work.

Sara has included 20 projects, including large quilts (up to 89" in length), lap quilts, baby quilts, and table runners.

Although some of the quilts have large triangles, most are made using only squares or rectangles.

All of these quilts are perfect for gifts. You can personalize them with your own fabric choices.

These are only a few of my favorite quilts from the book. There are so many more! You can see a gallery of more of the sample projects by clicking HERE.

If you'd like to win your own copy of Sara's book, make sure you leave a comment here. To make it more fun, tell me what you'll do with the extra time you'll have on your hands after you make one of these quilts.

Hope you're having a good weekend. I'll announce the winner on Wednesday -- see you then!

June 5, 2010

Hopefully you've been more creative and productive than I've been lately. In case you didn't notice, I re-designed my blog. It was completely unintentional. Have you ever selected the wrong option at the exact instant that you realized it was the wrong option?

I really appreciate all the kind comments on my Blogger's Quilt Festival Post. Hopefully you had a chance to check out all the wonderful quilts. I still haven't finished visiting all the participants -- there are so many! I'd like to share a beautiful post that I saw while I was visiting. Just grab a tissue and go here.